Uncle Fred's present
by JustAnotherMadHatter
Summary: It's Roxy's and Fred's birthday, and it seems today couldn't get any worse. One shot.


She just has got to run off all the freaking time!

"Roxy!" he yells, his voice getting lost in the breeze as he slaloms between the trees. His only answer is the pounding of his feet on the hard rocks.

It's getting dark too. Merlin, he should've listened to James and spent the afternoon at Grandma's annoying the shit out of Al and pulling pranks on Dom. But nooo. Instead, he just had to come here in the middle of nowhere (a forest, for God's sake!) and endure five hours of "family time"; slowly burning in the sun, getting chased by wasps and losing his favourite pair of sunglasses to an angry-looking bear. His skin is red and sore from the sunburn and he can only dread the look that will cross James' face when the two cousins meet again. Ugh.

"Roxy?" Some splashing noise up ahead. There must be some kind of stream nearby. It has got to be something like eight PM already, and he's still got to study for the History of Magic test coming up next week. Only instead of being able to do that, or even to snuggle under the covers and finish the Agatha Christie book his parents just bought him, Fred's stuck wandering around blindly in the wilderness.

And he promised his parents he wouldn't come back to the car without his sister.

He fills his lungs and bellows in the evening.

"ROXY!"

"Fred?" And her head suddenly appears in the middle of a mass of branches. Swiftly, in an almost cat-like way, she leaps down from the tree and lands gracefully on the uneven ground, raising her arms over her head like an acrobat.

"Ta-da!" she says in her sing-song voice. She didn't even trip or momentarily lose her balance like he would have done. How pathetic.

And she's grinning too.

Too annoyed to answer, he jabs a finger over his shoulder and starts to turn around, hoping she'll get the simple message. But she grabs his arm and spins him back so that he faces her.

"Come on, I have to show you something!" she says excitedly, pulling him towards the trees and starting to climb, reaching the nearest branch in the blink of an eye. She shots an impatient look back at him. "C'mon!" she urges, already bouncing with excitement.

He should say no. The Fred they both know would have refused, pushed his glasses further up his nose and made his way back to their parents, maybe tripping on a rock on the way. But maybe it's knowing how long the walk back to the car is, or how sore his legs are from walking around all day, that pushes him towards his sister. Silently, he reaches for the low branch, ignoring her helping and somewhat teasing outstretched hand, and pulls himself up with less difficulty than he had apprehended. Roxy just smiles, takes her hand back and leads the way to the top of the tree.

He sits on one of the highest branches next to her, his head leaning uncomfortably against the hard trunk, breathing a little hard from the climb. Roxy stares off into the landscape, facing away from him, hiding her expression.

She picked the highest hiding place. The treetops under them are like a sea of messy, green, mossy foliage. He shivers into the breeze, waits for her to say why she brought him here. Breaks the silence.

"I give up," he says, trying to shift his weight and not fall off their branch at the same time. "What am I supposed to see?"

She raises a finger to her lips, beckoning him to silence. He thinks of how hard she can hit when someone ignores one of her wishes and spends the next few minutes silently speculating on how weird his sister acts sometimes.

"There," she says finally, like she'd been waiting for the good time. She points to the sky. "What do you think?" He looks at what she's showing.

Red, orange and gold stripes twirl around together on the light blue background. The sun has just set. The clouds look so fluffy and light, pink ringed like cotton candy. The sight could've come straight out of a painting.

"It's pretty," he answers, shrugging. "Is this it? You wanted to show me the sunset?"

"What's today?" she asks, still not looking at him, ignoring the tinge of sarcasm in his voice.

"You know what."

"I want you to tell me."

"Today's April 22nd. Our birthday." She's unusually pushy today, too.

"Don't you think then," she turns towards him and he's shocked to find her eyes filled with tears. "that maybe this right here was created just for us? Only for us. As a birthday present."

"From who?" he whispers, taken aback by the strong emotion in her voice, the shining of her eyes, forgetting to laugh at her strange question.

She shrugs. "I dunno. Uncle Fred, maybe." She turns back to the sky and looks up, Fred copying her right away, just like when they were little and always did the same things at the exact same time. The sky is clear, open, like a pair of arms inviting you to join the hug.

"I can see him," she says slowly, "he's sitting on a cloud and looking down at us. He's happy we're talking about him. He wishes he could talk to us. He misses dad."

Silence. Not an uncomfortable one, though. A simple, easy quietness, because they don't need to talk to understand one another. The breeze makes the trees sway lightly together, as if they were all dancing to the same rhythm.

"He's laughing at your sunburn." Roxy grins at him and he's relieved to see that the tears have left her eyes. A chilly wind blows and they instinctively press themselves against the other, her head fitting in the crook of his neck perfectly, his cheek on her dishevelled spiky hair. It's nice, just like old times, when they would spend all of their time just being together and having fun. At Hogwarts, him being in Hufflepuff and Roxy in Gryffindor, it's hard to find the time to hang out together.

Sometimes he misses it.

But he would never say it.

Instead he laughs out loud, and nudges her with his elbow. "You're nuts, you know that?"

She laughs along with him and grabs his wrist as he's about to pull away to climb down.

"It's real pretty though, isn't it? Can't we stay a bit longer?"

Fred doesn't notice landscapes or shapes or colours the way his twin does; he simply doesn't get what's so extraordinary about a summer sky (don't they all look the same, anyway?). But tonight, looking at her amazed expression as she stares at their present-sunset, the swirls of colours and quietness that will only last an instant, he does get it. Sort of.

"Sure." He says, settling back down, letting her snuggle under his arm, thinking of this moment, a silent evening staring at the sky with his sister that he might never have the chance to live again. But instead of losing precious time by reflecting on how short life is, he chooses to enjoy it. "We can stay."


End file.
